Belgium: Wallonia’s PV system owners to pay grid-fee starting from 2020

The energy regulator of the Belgian region of Wallonia, CWaPE, has officially adopted the new tariff methodology for the period 2019-2023, which it submitted to public consultation in early April. The new methodology includes the introduction of a grid-fee for residential PV installations.

The new fee will be applied to all of the region’s PV system owners starting from Jan. 1, 2020, and not starting from 2019 as previously announced by the CWaPE. The fee will range from €330 to €560 and will be paid to Wallonias’s power providers depending on the system size and on the geographic position of the electricity suppliers.

According to local newspaper Le Soir, which cites data from local association Touche pas à mes certificats verts (Don’t touch my green certificates), which represents the interests of small PV power producers in the region, approximately 133,000 owners of PV installations will be affected by the new fee.

The CWaPE made its first attempt to introduce a grid-fee for PV installations in 2015, although the Court of Appeal of Brussels revoked a similar fee introduced by Belgium’s Flemish-speaking region of Flanders in 2014.

Wallonia reached a cumulative capacity of 916 MW at the end of 2016, according to provisional numbers released by Belgian renewable energy association Apere. The vast majority of the region’s PV capacity comes from residential PV installation not exceeding in size 10 kW  under the expired incentive green certificate scheme Solwatt and Qualiwatt program, which is still running. In 2016, newly installed PV capacity reached 64 MW.